Back in July I bought the Phillips VoIP841B system for my warehouse, and after trying it out for awhile, I just have to say I love it.

The basic idea is it’s a dual-mode system that can work with your traditional landline as well as your Skype account. While I have the landline plugged in, and it works fine, the Skype portion is the focus for me and it is fabulous.

While I have always loved the free VoIP service, it has been annoying to tell people “Hold on, have to get my headset!” or making sure my computer was on at the right time. With these handsets you can finally answer your Skype calls like a normal phone call, wander around as you would with any cordless phone, and no need for the computers to be on! YES!

You can do most of your Skype functions directly from the handset, such as looking at your contact list and click on any user just as you would normally from the computer.

Now, the fun part… add SkypeIn ($60.00 a year) and SkypeOut (a per minute price), or get SkypePro ($3.00 a month, discounted SkypeIn price) and you have a full VoIP system for far less than places such as Vonage. And Skype-to-Skype calls are still free.

As for the actual handsets (you can have up to 4 per base station) they are a little awkward to hold, but do have a normal earpiece headjack for you to use. Otherwise, they are as good as just about any other cordless phone I’ve ever owned for sound quality.

Anyway, I love them, and HIGHLY recommend the system for anyone who wants to lower their monthly phone bills. And how much do I love them? I just bought a second pair for my house.

So, I talked about how Packet 8 messed us over when we tried switching to them for VoIP. Well, we’re looking around now, not giving up on the idea quite yet, but we have hit a new snag… 911 service.

It seems, according to Verizon Voicewing, that no one is able to give us 911 service, so they don’t want us as a customer due to liability issues. That’s all wonderful, however, while we fall in the Kirksville 911 calling area… our house is outside of the area they’ll come out to! Even though we can call 911, they just go “Sorry, we can’t come out there.”

I am going to keep trying to find a VoIP provider who doesn’t care, but we’re kinda screwed for the moment and it’s getting annoying!

Back in December I talked about switching to Packet 8 for VoIP service. At the time we signed up, they told us, both online and on the phone, that we could port our current phone numbers to their service. That was on December 28th, it appears on December 29th they put a flag on our account telling us they could not do it.

Well, they had told us it might take 2 – 3 months to complete. so we thought nothing of the delay, and we had no reason to log into our billing account as it was just coming off our credit cards. Course, we finally log in to see what’s going on and we are greeted by the message we can’t have our phone numbers, the whole reason we went with them. Well… no phone numbers, we no want, so adios Packet 8.

I can’t help but feel a bit screwed over and lied to by them. How could their website AND their phone service people both say they could do it, and then 1 day later it says they can’t? No, that doesn’t look suspicious at all.

So, back on the VoIP hunt I go…

Skype released the newest version of their software, and there’s a couple of nifty new features. Some of them I haven’t gotten to play with yet like Call Forwarding and Live Chats, but one I’m loving is the new extension for Firefox.

It installs in to Firefox, and it turns ANY phone number on a web page in to a clickable link that will dial that number automatically in Skype for you. You will have to have Skype Out credits to place the calls, but at $29.95 for unlimited calls in a year, or $.02 a minute, it’s well worth it.

And, it seems to be able to tell the difference between phone and fax numbers (this from one of my company sites):

It’s just a little thing, but darn handy when out of town on business!

Interesting article at Business Week today about how the number of homes with a land line is dropping. In the first half of 2006, 1 in 8 homes were using something other than a traditional land line as their phone. In 2003 it was 1 in 20.

The weird thing is the article seems to focus mostly on how this will effect research calls and political polling like this is a great tragedy and how they don;t know they will do their polling. How about mentioning WHY this is happening? Landlines are not keeping up with cell phone and VoIP pricing, and so long as they keep their insanely high pricing structure, the number of homes with old style phones will decrease.

How about instead of worrying about how a few pollers will do their job, what about the thousands of phone company employees that will eventually lose their jobs because the phone companies refuse to lower their fees? There was a ton more to this story, but as usual, poor, lazy reporting and missed the bigger picture.

I’ve talked about it for ages, but as of next week, I will no longer have normal phones at home and I will be serviced by Packet 8 VoIP service. Shall be interesting to finally have it in my house, and I am sure I will post lots about it.

Interesting technology news today on several fronts:

Microsoft has decided it’s time to take on the iPod. They are rumored to be working on a WiFi enabled player that will not need a computer to add music to it. They are also rumored to be working on their own version of the iTunes music store.

My thoughts? Too little, too late. iPod is more than a brand at this point, it’s an icon. It’s chic, it’s cool, two things Microsoft has never mastered. Also, how do you get your existing music on to the new player? Add it to your network? Not easy for everyone. Also, what information will it bebroadcasting. I want to see a lot more info on this, but I think it’s a bad idea.

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America Online is considering offering their service for free to all high speed internet users. They’ve lost around 8 million subscirbers since the end of 2002, so they are considering going to an ad revenue based system instead of subscription.

It’s about time. The only reason I still have AOL is to keep the email addresses locked down. Otherwise I hate the service.

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Earthlink has WiFi’d most of Anaheim, CA, now they are working on VoIP services. They seem to be testing VoIP phones which can be used anywhere in their WiFi cloud, and even in the car at up to 40 MPH. I knew this was coming at some point, but it’s exciting to see it actually working. Traditional phone companies better get ready to lose even more customers.

Netgear is finally taking pre-orders on their SPH101 Skype Phone. The bad news? Amazon.com is listing it for $249.

So, why am I still tempted to buy this? IT’S SKYPE…WITHOUT A COMPUTER! *runs around the room until he passes out* It works with 802.11g WiFi and backwards compatiable to 802.11b (non-tech speak:99% chance if you have WiFi in your home/work/school, this will work for you). Now you could finally receive a Skype call when your computer is turned off and you are in a totaly different room. So long as there is a WiFi connection, this sucker will work.

Now, carry this idea further…city wide WiFi hot spots. If it works with them (more on that in a second), you would be able to go anywhere in a city and use the phone. SkypeOut and SkypeIn work with it, so your phone calls to-and-from landlines and mobile phones would still work. With that in mind, would you need a cell phone with a monthly contract? Would you need to worry about overages? Nope.

I don’t want to seem all Pollyanna about it, there are some cons to it. Ever been in a hotel that reuires you log in before they will let you surf the web? This phone won’t work on those connections. No text messaging. City wide WiFi is still unproven to be effective in large office buildings. $249 is a tad steep.

My recommendation is you wait for the technology to get some of the bugs worked out and for the price to come down. It gets to a version 2.0, the price drops to around $100 – $150…I will be killing all the analog landlines in my life off.

Oh yeah, did I mention it’s ugly?

Yes, even more about Skype. Version 2.0 is finally out and there was a major feature addition! Live streaming video! And it’s still free when you talk to someone else on Skype.

Why don’t you have this yet? Seriouslly.

So, CES just keeps pumping out the great new gadgets this year. We all know, and love, our Wi-Fi, but there are always those annoying bling spots in your house. Well, now there is a way for you to boost the signal using the current coaxial cable setup in your house. According to this article on Engadget.com, Auragrid will do just this.

In the picture above, you will unscrew the antennas from your wi-fi unit, and screw on this device. You will then screw your coaxial threw is also, this will turn ever cable jack in your house in to a booster. You will then go to each jack, unscrew your cable, screw on the white antenna, and screw the cable in to that. This will give you another reciever wherever there is a jack. For some reason this won’t work with a satellite system.

You combine this with all the upcoming wi-fi phones and cameras…exciting times for home networks lay ahead of us all. Very exciting times.

Bill Gates gave a speech yesterday at CES and announced that both Phillips and Uniden will be producing handsets to work with Windows Live Meeting, the Microsoft entry into the wonderful world of VoIP. Free calles from WLM-to-WLM account, and $.023 a minute calling rate for you to call a standard phone line.

Why does anyone still have a landline? Seriouslly.

The CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is going on in Las Vegas right now. This is the holy land of gadget geeks, such as myself, so the news coming out this week is always exciting. The big thing this year seems to be Skype ready phones that work off Wi-Fi.

There are going to be variations in all sorts of flavors. Want to use your old phones with Skype? Check out the D-Link USB Phone adapter that will let you use any of your old land line phones as a Skype ready phone.

Want to do a conference call with Skype? Will be easy soon with the the Xing by Ipevo. They will also be coming out a handset called The FLY.1.

What if you still want to use a landline and Skype all from the same phone? Thanks be to Panasonic for coming up with a dual phone! It will work with both traditional phone lines and Skype.

The ultimate dream Skype phone though would not require being connected to a computer, would work on Wi-Fi anywhere and would have all the Skype features like SkypeIn and SkypeOut. DONE! Netgear is prepping a phone that will do just that. Think about the possabilities of this for a minute. San Fransisco is due to be one big Wi-Fi hotspot in the not to distant future, you could Skype from anywhere in the city. Skype in your hotel room…Skype in the local coffee shop…Skype in the city parks of New York City…Skype in other countries…anywhere there is Wi-Fi, your Skype would work. And with more and more hotspots popping up, you could even get rid of your cell phone and your landline all at once.

The mind boggles.